NotRobin
by bluethursday
Summary: When the Joker kills Jason instead of going to Dick, Tim goes straight to Batman.


**Not Robin**

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Pairing: Bruce/Tim = eventually. When Tim grows up.

Summary: When the Joker kills Jason instead of going to Dick, Tim goes straight to Batman.

He watched Batman walk across the rooftop before he spoke the name guaranteed to make him listen.

"Bruce."

Batman turned in shock as a young boy stepped from the shadows. He looked all of 6 years old with eyes like chips of ice. For a second he thought he was dreaming.

The boy, Tim, moved close towards Bruce. "Bruce" Tim repeated.

"Bruce." a third time, and he watched Batman's eyes narrow. "Jason is dead."

"What do you know about that." The voice came out low, feral.

"More than you know" Tim replied. "I know your name, I know Jason's." Tim looked over the side of the building. Two Face was propped against a wall, unconscious.

" I know that you injured Harvey so badly he'll be in a hospital for weeks. How long Bruce?" Tim asked.

Batman glared down at him, waiting for Tim to continue but Tim knew these games. He wouldn't babble, wouldn't give more information than necessary.

"How long until you have so much blood on your hands that nothing will wash it out."

Bruce raced through everyone who would have sent the boy. Maybe Ra's, Ra's might have done it but he couldn't be sure. "Who sent you?" He asked. Tim ignored him, he wasn't playing by Batman's rules. Not tonight.

"No one Bruce. I know what happened in Ethiopia. I know how Jason died. I know that Joker got him away from you and —-

"Who sent you" Bruce interrupted, his voice nearing a yell. Tim knew he hadn't been sleeping. It was making him sloppy, this version of the Bat was too compromised to think clearly, too compromised to keep his voice down.

"I know that Joker got him away from you and beat him to death." Tim finished.

"So how long Bruce, until you take a crowbar, pick it up" He could see how tense his shoulders were even under the cowl "and Beat. Someone. To. Death. With. It. How long until you start deciding that you can kill people. Vengeance is for the villains, the criminals and the civilians. You, unfortunately are a hero and until you stop being a hero you cannot take a life."

Bruce scowled and Tim scowled right back. "You are an idea, a higher power and if you kill you become a villain, you pollute the idea." The words Bruce himself had spoken years before came back to him from the mouth of a child.

_I will become an idea. A symbol._

"You could make it look like an accident, one that had no ties to you and you could still be a hero and god knows you want to, that you think about it. That you planned it over and over again but who would be next Bruce. It's easy to say just this once but that's a lie and we both know it. This is you, and if you take that one step." Tim paused "You are never going to come back from it."

Blue eyes met the white of the cowl "Who will take down the Batman then? Who's going to stop you Bruce? Who will put you out of your misery. Who will kill the Batman?"

Those are Tim's parting words.

**Follow up Fics :**

**Who will kill the Batman**

_Who will have to kill Batman. _A statement.

The visit starts with"Who will kill the Batman?" A question.

It has been two weeks and Bruce has decided.

_Who kill the Batman?_

"No one". An answer.

Tim smiles behind his cup of tea, a small delicate thing that Bruce can't help but watch. He doesn't smile often and it shows.

Bruce sits down and removes his cowl, taking the other cup offered to him. The smell of freshly brewed peppermint makes him smile. It's been a long time since he's smiled. It shows.

_No one will kill the Batman._

**And Will you be My Robin?**

"Will you be Robin?" He asks, but somehow he knows the answer will be—

"No. I'm not a Robin." Because Robins are sons and loud and bright and there is nothing bright about this little creature except everything.

Except the way he shines, a constant effervescent glow. He is not the sun or a star to to read under, but the light of the moon that guides a weary soldier home.

He is the light that guided Bruce, Batman, home.

Bruce may not know what the little not-Robin is , may not have assigned him a place or watched him claw out his own but he knows that whatever the little creature is, he has guided him home and for now that is enough.

**Comfort**

Tim ran the damp washcloth across Bruce's forehead, Bruce not Batman, not here, not curled over a toilet emptying the contents of his stomach in a porcelain bowl.

"Hush Bruce, hush." Tim crooned softly as he rubbed the older man's back.

Bruce's body seized as his stomach disagreed with him, soon Tim would have him drink water.

Scarecrow's new poison. Even with the antidote, Bruce had spent the better part of the morning kneeling on a cold, tiled floor sick and highly nauseous.

Small hands massaged a tense back. "Hush Bruce, hush its okay, everything is going to be just fine now." Tim repeated. He had no idea how to do this, how to comfort someone but he was trying. Mother had always insisted that he care for himself.

Resting his cheek on the broad shaking back Tim hummed. He would have wondered if the other Robins had seen Bruce like this, hurt and broken, but he knew it would be a waste of thought. The answer would be no. The Bat is not human, it is an ideal, a symbol. It is not susceptible to human frailty, human weakness and it will not allow others under its protection share its pain. Batman would never have allowed his children to see him like this.

No, they had never seen Batman break.

Night after night he had stalked Batman and Robin, watched them and made himself feel as though somewhere out there a little piece of good existed.

And then he watched it all fall apart. He watched the first Robin leave, pushed away from the nest.

He watched Bruce take Jason Peter Todd under his wing. Tim had watched him, his power and roughness against the grace and skill of Dick and he thought he saw a dead boy walking. Jason Peter Todd was going to get himself killed if he didn't learn how to control his anger. In the end none of that mattered. In the end there was crowbar.

Rising to run the washcloth under the tap Tim started to hum, soft and gentle, wringing the cloth out once, twice before wiping Bruce's forehead again, then his shoulders, then his back. His hand large and darker than Tim's reaches out and entwines their fingers as best he can, settling for gripping his own larger hand around a frail wrist. Tim strokes his face but his eyes refuse to open.

"I need to wet the cloth again, you can hold my hand after I do that, I'll be right over there. I won't leave." The grip tightens. "I won't leave." Then loosens as deep blue eyes snap open.

Wetting the cloth again Tim pauses to look at Bruce. Black sweatpants don't do much to hide the scars criss crossing his back. Some, Tim has bore witnessed to, photographed even, and others are from a time before Tim.

He's a man, sick and throwing up at 2 in the morning. To Tim, he's a man.

Not an ideal.

Not the Bat.

He brings the glass of water he left on the sink to thin lips and Bruce drinks, fingers clutching at Tim's free wrist. He'll have bruises tomorrow, purple marks in the shape of fingers wrapped around his wrists. Dark blue eyes look at Tim, grateful and silent. Tim smiles and feels the hold on his wrist loosen.

"I'm not leaving"

…

When Bruce speaks, he speaks softly, quietly as one imagines one would speak if they were trying to lure a small frightened animal from the burrow it had hidden itself in. When he moves he runs his hands through soft black hair and picks up the weightless little doll as often as he can.

Something inside of Bruce watches the small creature and aches. The violent raging darkness that spawned the Bat recognizes its kin and craves to bring him close and never let him go. The darkness watches the perfect way the creature eats and speaks and walks in its presence and howls in rage. Children do not take care that their feet do not track mud into their abode. They are not meant to do so. Nor do they organize their books chronologically, by author and color. Tim is not meant to do so.

So Bruce takes care to make Tim's room organized and logical. Clean to the point of sterility but warm and facing the outside world. He takes care that the furniture is placed just so and that the food served is organized in its alphabetical order.

The Bat howls and learns.

The worst parts of him felt kinship to the creature. The parts of him that wanted him to rip and tear and brutally eviscerate the criminals he captured wanted nothing more than to keep Tim safe.

Perhaps because on that fateful night so long ago, Tim had saved him from his madness. Dragged him out using only himself as bait. His little not-robin played a dangerous game, consorting with things that could have hurt him so very much.

It was the price he chose to pay, Bruce supposed, to bring him back from the place he went, the abyss he walked into. One foot in front of the other, slowly but surly falling. At times he watches the Gotham skyline and wondered who he would have become if not for Tim, if he would even be at all. He has never been a man to delude himself. He knows the answer and places it in the same place he stores the knowledge of what would have occurred if a bat had not smashed through the glass of the window in his father's study so long ago.

Tim has become his….just…his, in his own way. At his own pace Tim had settled down on the foundations Bruce had painstakingly laid for him. In his own way, the boy who had watched his parents die, a simple mugging gone wrong watched Tim and claimed him as his own.

Bruce was not a man to delude himself. He knew that the nest he built was meant to trap, to keep. He knew that he could never let Tim go, not when he came to him from the dark, the same dark that Bruce thrived in and forced him to stop killing himself.

Forced him in a way that left Bruce choice but to accept, because Tim was small and frail underneath the ice he wore. So damaged that nothing could put him back together again except everything. Every dredge of affection and love that Bruce had, he had poured into Tim who poured it right back, with gentle hands and gentle force. Everything that he had buried that winter night so long ago, he pressed into the very thing, the very person who had kept him sane.

Like Hades dragging sweet Persephone down to hell, he would keep his Persephone, and in their kingdom Tim would be revered. In the dark of the cave, in the place where all light faded into shadow he would take what had been offered and never let it leave.

Gazing down at the creature resting in his lap, he couldn't help but stroke one downy cheek.

Bruce pressed fingertips stained red to the creatures lips. Tim's eyes fluttered open as he took the offering with the intent it was given curling his tongue to devour the fruit. A single seed bursts and stains his lips.

_And will you eat the fruit._

Bruce chased the pomegranate fragment with his lips, mindful of the body lounging on his fruit rolls to the floor, noticed but inconsequential as Bruce pulls the smaller figure closer to him.

Carefully he picks Tim up.

_That will condemn you to darkness everlasting._

He can walk, his legs are capable but he is wounded, hurt and the older man cannot bear witness to that pain. He can walk, but he is carried instead. Something in his eyes makes Bruce cradle him in his arms, tucking him away, as if, if he could just hold him tightly enough he could keep everyone else out. He could make whatever put that look on his face go away.

As if he could make years of living with far too little love fade.

Those eyes that can't quite believe they are worthy of love, that they are something meant to be cared for look up at him, controlled in worst way.

Bruce is careful with Tim, because for all of his ice, lies a broken little boy.

_And will you eat the fruit?_

"And will you eat the fruit." Bruce murmurs against pink lips, taking the lingering taste of the pomegranate from bruised lips.

Tim folds his body closer to Bruce, as the older man carries them to their nest. It is time for all good bats to go to sleep.

The morning sun rises.


End file.
